108 DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 



substances, could be met with alive in the stomach ; yet Dr. Lister gives 

 an account of a boy who vomited up several, which, he observes, had six- 

 teen legs.^ The eggs perhaps might have been swallowed in salad ; and, 

 as vegetables make a part of most people's daily diet, enough might have 

 passed into the stomach to support them when hatched. — Linne tells us 

 that the caterpillar of a moth {Aglossa pinguinalis), common in houses, 

 has also been found in a similar situation, and is one of the worst of our 

 insect infesters. — In a very old tract, which gives a figure of the insect, a 

 caterpillar of the almost incredible length of the middle finger is said to 

 have been voided from the nostrils of a young man long afflicted with 

 dreadful pains in his head.^ — But the most extraordinary account with 

 respect to lepidopterous larvae (unless he has mistaken his insects) is given 

 by Azara, the Spanish traveler before quoted ; who says that in South 

 America there is a large brown moth, which deposits its young in a kind 

 of saliva upon the flesh of persons who sleep naked ; these introduce 

 themselves under the skin without being perceived, where they occasion 

 swelling attended by inflammation and violent pain. When the natives dis- 

 cover it, they squeeze out the larvae, which usually amount to five or six.^ 

 But amongst all the orders, none is more fruitful in devourers of man 

 than the Diptera. The Bot-flies (^(Estrus L.) you have, doubtless, often 

 heard of, and how sorely it annoys our cattle and other quadrupeds; but 

 I suspect have no notion that there is a species appropriated to man. The 

 existence, indeed, of this species seems to have been overlooked by ento- 

 mologists (though it stands in Gmelin's edition of the Systema NatunE'^, 

 upon the authority of the younger Linne), till Humboldt and Bonpland 

 mentioned it again. Speaking of the low regions of the torrid zone, where 

 the air is filled with those myriads of mosquitos which render uninhab- 

 itable a great and beautiful portion of the globe, they observe that to these 

 may be joined the (Estrus Hominis, which deposits its eggs in the skin of 

 man, causing there painful tumors.^ Gmelin says that it remains beneath 

 the skin of the abdomen six months, penetrating deeper, if it be disturbed, 

 and becoming so dangerous as sometimes to occasion death. The imago 

 he describes as being of a brown color, and about the size of the common 

 house-fly ; so that it is a small species compared with the rest of the 

 genus.^ Even the gad-fly of the ox, leaving its proper food, has been 

 known to oviposit in the jaw of a woman, and the hots produced from the 

 eggs finally caused her death.''' Other flies also of various kinds thus pen- 

 etrate into us, either preying upon our flesh, or getting into our intestines. 



' Philos. Trans, ubi suprk. 



2 Fulvius Angelinus et Vincentius Alsarius, Be verme admirando per nares egresso. Ea- 

 venna;, 1610. 



3 Azara, 217. I cannot help suspecting this to be synonymous with the CEsirus Hominis 

 next mentioned. 



* From Pallas, JV. Nord. Beyir. i. 157. 



* Essai sur la Olograph, des Plantes, 136. 



8 For an investigation of the question, whether man is attacked by a distinct species of 

 (Estrus, see a report on the statements of MM. Roulin, Howship, Say, Guerin, <fec., made 

 to r Academic des Sciences, 1833, by MM. Isidore GeofJ'ry Saint Hiiaire, and Dumeril (copied 

 in Ann. Soc. Ent. de France, ii. 518.), who, on the whole, though with some hesitation, pro- 

 nounce for the affirmative. Yet most of the facts passed in review seem rather to support 

 the idea that species of CEstrus, whose proper abode is in other animals, occasionally attack 

 man. 



7 Clark in Linn. Trans, iii. 323. note. 



